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With Charlie Hebdo, a Hajj stampede, hijab fashion shows, and Donald Trump threatening to kick out all American Muslims, this fall was definitely a relevant time for me to take a history of Islam class. Beyond some basics, I didn\u2019t know too much about Islam beforehand, but I certainly do now, and I suggest everyone with an interest in history, religion, current events, or human rights take Islam in the World (HI-204, if you\u2019re curious).<\/p>\n
As the final project, we got a choice\u2014either do a research project, or something creative. Professor Carol Ferrara\u2019s first example was to read and report on a novel concerning Islam, and as a Writing, Literature, and Publishing major, I latched on immediately. I\u2019d had A Thousand Splendid Suns<\/em> by Khaled Hosseini on my Goodreads \u201cto read\u201d shelf for a while, and I decided there was no better time to get cracking.<\/p>\n The novel follows two Afghan, Muslim women over the span of about forty years. Not only does it touch on several important moments in Afghan history, but it shows how the Taliban taking over affected the lives of everyday women. Laila, a young girl born in 1978 who was raised to hold her head high and uncovered, taught by her father and female school teacher that it was a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan and that she had the world at her fingertips, \u00a0witnesses all that promise fall apart with the explosion of a bomb. She finds herself with no choice but to marry Rasheed, an abusive man decades older than she is. He forces her to wear a burqa1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and never leave the house without him (both of which later become law under the Taliban). Rasheed also already has a wife, Mariam, who is nineteen years older than Laila and takes far more abuse, both physically and emotionally, from Rasheed. The story follows the women as they grow from icy strangers to sisters under the harsh rule of both the Taliban and their husband.<\/p>\n Even though \u201cA Thousand Splendid Suns\u201d spends quite a bit of time exploring the harshness of the Taliban and what their radical ideas meant for men and women living under their rule, it spends far more time ripping your heart into a million pieces, putting it back together, and shredding it up again. Both women go through hardship after hardship, and you feel every one as if it were your own. Thankfully, Hosseini\u2019s writing is emotional enough that you feel every victory too, small as some of them are. At the center of the novel are themes of rejection, oppression, and boundless love, all of which are relatable to anyone, even if you don\u2019t know the first thing about Afghan history or Islam. If you DO know your stuff, rest assured that the novel is extremely accurate to real life, so there\u2019s no fear of being taken out of the moment by any artful rearranging of history.<\/p>\n My favorite part\u2014and I\u2019ll keep this as spoiler-free as possible\u2014is when one of the women comes across a loved one she hasn\u2019t seen in a very long time. After more than half a novel\u2019s worth of getting my hopes shot down, I expected this person to be a figment of her imagination, or for their reunion to all be a dream. My disbelief was mirrored in the woman\u2019s reaction. As it slowly becomes more apparent that the person is real, both the reader and the character begin to feel hopeful of change, and begin wondering what this means for the future. The way that Hosseini crafted that scene to make the character and the reader feel identical emotions is incredible, and any writer could benefit from studying that passage.<\/p>\n Overall, I highly recommend \u201cA Thousand Splendid Suns\u201d to anyone who likes history, as well as anyone who likes good literature. It is a beautifully crafted novel rooted deep in Afghanistan\u2019s history, with moments ranging from painful rawness to gorgeous moments of salvation. Reading it will not only be enjoyable but will also offer a close look into a world many of us don\u2019t know much about, or only see one side of.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n